How I Cured the Impossible

How I Cured the Impossible

This really happened. I hadn’t shared my story beyond a few trusted friends before as it seemed too unbelievable and I didn’t really know how I pulled off such a miracle. I’m closer to understanding how it worked now, so here is my story…

March 2013 I was rushed into hospital with a pain in excess of those final throws of childbirth. Lower left abdomen. Doubled over and begging for pain relief. This was the 4th time it had happened in the last few years. Each time I am kept in, given IV painkillers and then next day it just stops. No-one had ever given me an explanation before. This consultant had a good prod and this time declared he could feel a large mass. Worse case scenario, I am told, it’s Ovarian Cancer. Ok, I thought, I can deal with that. I do Functional Medicine, I’m familiar with the work of Dr Kelley, Dr Gonzalez (who was still with us then) and Dr Brownstein. I figured I would need a lot of proteolytic enzymes, some iodine and I would go ketogenic. I’d also just finished reading the book Earthing by Clint Ober, Stephen Sinatra and Martin Zucker, so I figured a grounding mat was going to help too. I was putting together a plan in those first few minutes.

It took weeks to get the Ultrasound scan to confirm the diagnosis. I don’t recall any fear, I felt prepared for battle and eager to meet my nemesis. The Sonographer was lovely, she swung round the screen so I could see. It looked surprisingly large – 5cm diameter, about the size of a lemon. To put that in perspective the ovary it was attached to was only 3cm diameter. It was made of dense, solid material and the weight twisting the ovary stalk was what had caused such agonising pain until eventually correcting itself. The Sonographer tells me it is an Ovarian Teratoma – a dermoid cyst of the ovary. So, definitely NOT cancer, I asked her to confirm. Apparently in the many years she’d done this job she’d seen enough to be 100% certain – a dermoid cyst and the only way to resolve it was surgery. Woah! I was not ok being cut open. I promised myself I would find another way.

Back home I started researching immediately. I found forums were ladies described the exact same excruciating pain I’d felt. They’d all opted for surgery. Some were satisfied with the outcome and others complained of their ovaries being unexpectedly taken out due to excessive cohesion and being thrown into early menopause. Others mentioned chronic pain from scar tissue. It wasn’t looking good. Surgery was an even more definite no. I scoured PubMed for alternates but there were none. It seemed that what I was planning to do had never been tried before. I would have to figure this out from scratch. Someone’s got to be first.

Teratoma literally means little monster, so the ‘thing’ was now renamed ‘Monster’ and battle commenced. Ovarian teratomas are described as a bizarre tumour, usually benign, although I’ll never know, as I knew enough about cancer to know that a biopsy would spread cancer stem cells everywhere and that wasn’t a risk worth taking. These heavy tumours can cause the ovary to twist, referred to as torsion, cutting off the blood supply. This I had experienced and it was agony. As they get larger they can rupture causing serious problems. They can contain all kinds of tissues being born of a primary oocyte in the ovary, however, my scan showed it to be mostly dense fatty tissue. That was a relief after seeing horrific pictures of ones with hair and teeth. Also, a bonus as fatty tissue is easier to break down than calcified tissue.

By the time I got my referral with the consultant, 3 months had passed. I hadn’t sat around doing nothing. I’d been actively taking down the Monster. I felt really positive that I’d done some serious damage to that thing. The assistant consultant saw me and was not interested in anything positive I had to say. I was not able to see the actual consultant. She had an image of the scan, and said that she would book the surgery. Woah! No way! I glanced at the plastic bottle of diet coke on her desk, placed there as if to reaffirm my gut instinct that I couldn’t trust her health advice. She was not seeing me as an individual, but following a one-size-fits-all protocol and I demanded another scan to see if I had managed to shrink the teratoma, totally believing I’d done enough to put a dent in it’s size and buy myself more time to carry on with my no-surgery protocol. After all the blackmail and scare tactics bounced off me, she reluctantly agreed, told me I was stupid and that it would only show growth and increase my chances of becoming a medical emergency with a gangrenous ovary. That fear mongering may have worked on others, but I held my ground.

Second scan. I’m nervous and confident at the same time. After standing up for my beliefs, I desperately needed a noticeable shrinkage. I knew there was shrinkage, but not how much and I needed it to be measurable enough to prove I was having an effect. Failure was not an option. I’m called in. The first scan image is there up on the screen and the instructions are to measure how much bigger it has grown.

There seemed to be a problem. The Sonographer pops out of the room and comes back with her senior colleague. They both stand there bemused, checking their notes, checking the first scan, and eventually conclude that there is no sign of any teratoma now. Nothing there at all. It has just disappeared. I recall feeling smug and a little surprised that it was ALL gone. I know this has never happened before as I’d checked all the research. No one had ever tried what I tried. It was unprecedented until now. I wanted to let others know they could do this too, but then it dawned on me that I didn’t really understand how I did it. I would need to figure it out first. With that threat of surgery looming, I’d thrown everything I had at it all at once, and didn’t know which interventions had worked and which hadn’t.

So, I’ll break it down. These are the things I did.

Proteolytic enzymes

These are pancreatic enzymes that digest proteins. When there is food in the gut they will digest that and work as digestive enzymes, but taken on an empty stomach they enter the circulation and digest anything that shouldn’t be there, working instead as proteolytic enzymes. I used these to break down the protective wall around the teratoma so that my immune system could ‘see’ it. I took high doses of 3 different types. After about 3 months taking these I started feeling nauseous, so I knew their job had been done and stopped taking them.

Ketogenic diet

If I trained my body to burn ketones for fuel rather than glucose it could do two things that would help me. Burn up the now-exposed fat inside the teratoma as fuel and also keep insulin low so that it cannot trigger growth of any kind. I ate a high-fat diet, where my only carbs were fruits and vegetables. It wasn’t 100% keto but I followed my body’s instincts on eating and did the best I could.

Iodine

Iodine is a nutrient required by the ovaries and deficiencies are associated with various growths on the ovaries including cysts and cancers. I’d read this in Dr David Brownstein’s books. I took Potassium Iodide every night. I had some selenium too to keep it in balance. I don’t recommend anyone takes iodine without knowing what they’re doing as it becomes toxic in high amounts.There are tests you can do to check your levels. I based my dose on my own specific case history and symptoms.

Earthing

I’d come across some very good information on Earthing, both in the book of the same name and via the Earthing Institute. Being connected to the Earth helps reduce inflammation and rebalance the excess positive ions that we accumulate from indoor living and technology with the unlimited negative ions from the ground. I went outside barefoot as much as I could, on grass, on sand and in the sea. I also invested in a grounding mat that I had wrapped around my ovary when I slept at night.

Visualisation

I already knew of the power of visualisation but had never really put it into practice. I visualised the Monster being pummelled by the various attacks I was directing at it. I gave life to it all in imagery, the Monster looked like something out of a children’s storybook with goggly eyes, horns and messy orange fur, the negative ions were coming at it like arrows, the proteolytic enzymes like little pacmans devouring it’s armour bite by bite. I watched the story of the Monster being destroyed play out in my head. I saw it gradually lose power and start shrinking away. I even felt sorry for it, and having looked into the power of emotions think that may also have been relevant to my success.

Colour

There were 2 colours that I needed to rebalance. This is where things got a little strange. I saw a very experienced and wonderful practitioner friend who was able to use muscle testing to check my protocol so far and he was also able to provide a list of the 7 key foods I needed to focus on. These foods were Aubergine, Red onions, Blueberries, Kale, Swiss Chard, Watercress and Broccoli. At first we decided it was because of how these foods support liver detoxification, breaking down the toxic innards of the dying monster, although I later realised it was actually the colours that mattered more. It was the blue-purple and green pigments. This moved me into the world of energy medicine. Each food has it’s own unique frequency profile which interacts with the frequency profiles of various cells in our body. It is the frequency of colour I was interested in here, think rainbows which separate white light into their individual colour frequencies. It seemed my rainbow was missing some colours.

I saw a lecture advertised at the Royal Society of Medicine on Phytonutrients focusing on Colour. Dr Deanna Minich was speaking, who I knew of through the Functional Medicine World. It was a Bank Holiday and the trains were hell, but I just knew intuitively I had to get there. I’m glad I did, as I started to understand how the colour fitted into my healing success. Deanna had a wonderful practitioner programme that I enrolled in and I studied her 7 Systems of Health, each Aspect relating to a different colour. It was my big Aha moment. I finally understood the connections.

Green is the colour linked to the Love Aspect, and for me this system was very out of balance. I was doing everything for others, my children, friends, family and never doing anything for myself. My self-worth and self-love was at an all-time low. I didn’t feel ok taking time out for me. I struggled to justify time spent on myself, it didn’t seem important – it all just seemed like an unnecessary luxury. Eventually I realised that taking good care of myself made be a better mum and better person to those I cared about.

Blue-purple is the colour for the Insight Aspect, linked to intuition and insight. I’d been ignoring my intuition. I looked outside myself for answers, for the science, the research, the evidence to prove something right, rather than looking inside and tapping into that ‘inner knowing’. Intuition is now my greatest ally, I trust it above all else. It is something we all have but have to work at it to be able to use it effectively. Being a very sciencey, fact-based person, it was hard for me to accept something that seemed so flimsy, but how wrong I was! There is a lot of great research out there on intuition and activities to strengthen your own intuitive skills. Once I took it on as the ‘Science of Intuition’ I was able to make that leap.

I am grateful for my experience with the Monster, it made me a better person, took me on a journey of self-discovery and left me with a greater sense of awe for the untapped powers we all possess. I believe now that all aspects of my protocol played their part and that these interventions may in fact be unique to me, and others seeking a similar result need to take their own uniqueness into consideration.

So that is my story of how I healed myself. I hope this can be an inspiration to others in need of hope and alternatives. It is empowering to know that anything is possible.

Since this story was written I’ve been continuing to explore ideas, and one of the things I tried during the healing process was the use of tuning forks. I didn’t cover this previously because I didn’t have much understanding of what role, if any, it may have played, but I’ve since explored the idea of sound and colour healing here: Are we beings of vibrational colour and sound?

Artwork by the very talented Rebecca Westeren, Artist, Healer and Author of Handbook for Health. She has many wonderful pieces for sale. It is my dream to own one some day.